


Say What You Need to Say

by SoU2019



Series: Royed OTPoly 2020 SoU [6]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Character Turned Into a Ghost, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, I love that stupid song (John Mayer), Love Confessions, M/M, Maes hughes is meddling from the grave, Mutual Pining, Romance, SoUarchive, hughes has had enough, some mild abuse of canon, uhhh look I'm tired and I tried, wingman Maes Hughes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25415977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoU2019/pseuds/SoU2019
Summary: Everything had been fine before a 20 year old Ed returned from Creta, but since then Roy had been a mess. Between political maneuverings, increasing his public standings, and flirting with Ed, the man hadn’t had time to sleep.(Ghost!Maes: As if a little thing like death could keep Maes Hughes from meddling.)
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Series: Royed OTPoly 2020 SoU [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815196
Comments: 6
Kudos: 129
Collections: RoyEd OTPoly 2020





	Say What You Need to Say

**Author's Note:**

> RoyEd Otpoly 2020  
> Hotel level  
> Not all walls are physical. Both Ed and Roy have had feelings for each other for ages, but they never admitted it. Something happens (plus outside source tipping them off, plus outside perspective)

Leafless trees glittered with snow, and the frozen ground contracted closer around the simple military issue coffin that lay six feet under a tombstone that bore the name Maes Hughes. It was early in the evening, but twilight always came early in the winter. 

Twilight was Maes’ favourite time of the day. He spent the daylight hours in a state of limbo feeling as if he was half asleep, but the moment the sun began its descent to the underbelly of the Earth, he would slowly come out of it and regain control. Slipping out of his casket was always the most difficult part of the night. Something about being so close to his mortal remains, and trying to get further away from them made leaving difficult. He felt drawn to his bones, even if rationally he knew that they held more dust than marrow. This had been one of the worst winters Central had ever seen, and the ground was crystalizing onto the smooth surface of the wooden box. Maes watched the crystals form with fascination, and a twinge of regret that he didn’t have access to his camera. In life he had always focused on portraits of those around him, but death had taught him to appreciate the tiny things, the silent things, the beautiful things that even the best camera wouldn’t be able to capture. He felt himself rising through the frozen earth, and finally emerging into the frigid air. The cemetery was covered in a thick layer of snow, and Maes watched transfixed as each individual snowflake fluttered and spun in the air as the currents of wind played.

Being dead is weird. When you are alive, there are so many things happening that you can never fully appreciate the world. Your own heartbeat drowns out the sounds of butterflies, and the blinking of your eyes obstructs your view of the world. When you are dead, you make no sound and you can finally appreciate everything. 

Some nights Maes wandered the city, watching the moss growing in gutters, and sometimes he chatted with the other ghosts who inhabited the same space. Those who died with plenty of energy still in their souls haunted this plane of existence. He had been 29 when Envy had killed him and Truth had given him the option to use up what remained. It was peaceful. Nearly every ghost was a very calm version of their previous selves, and they were all busy with observing the natural world. Death had changed him, Truth had changed his perception of the world and he understood.

It took nothing more than a thought to locate Gracia and to find himself home. It had been 6 years and Gracia had not moved on. She had tried, and he had watched her try to go on dates, but she never seemed to be able to connect with anybody. It was difficult to watch his wife get dressed up to go meet another man, but he had seen Truth and he understood. Tonight Gracia was not going out on a date, she was sitting on the sofa listening to Elicia read aloud. His little girl had grown up so much in the last few years, and he smiled as she correctly pronounced a multisyllabic word. Roy would be proud.

Roy would still be at his desk. Still plotting his way to the top, just like he had sworn he would do all those years ago. Maes checked in on him regularly, and even occasionally caught him having dinner and playing games with Elicia. Gracia worried about him, and Elicia asked him why he wasn’t married. Roy always laughed it off and assured Gracia that he was fine, and told Elicia that he only wanted to marry the Fuhrership. Maes knew better.

He had watched Roy mourn him, bury him, and avenge him. He had seen the aftermath of The Promised Day, and had watched Dr. Marcoh’s late night visit to cure Roy’s eyes. Maes watched the stone flicker and crack as its power drained, and had found himself surrounded by half a dozen ghosts of Roy’s family members who joined hands and drained their own remaining soul energy to steady the stone. One by one, the ghosts of people, who all shared that distinct Mustang look, disintegrated and returned to Truth. That had not been the first time he had seen that type of transfer of power. Trisha Elric had used the last of her soul to resuscitate Edward after his fight with Kimbley. He had been watching the boys every night in Briggs, and had been surprised to manifest in a small apartment surrounded by a worried doctor, two bulky chimaras, and a young woman who floated just above the bed. They said nothing to each other, but Maes could sense that Ed’s soul had been tapped, and that it was killing him. Souls and living bodies are created simultaneously, you can not have one without the other (as Al had been discovering) and now Ed’s soul was out of sync with his body. He had automatically reached out, but Trisha had waved him away and continued to let the gleaming drops of energy fall from her fingers into Ed’s chest. It was difficult to watch as Ed’s soul regained it’s appropriate power level but it was impossible to look away from the scene. The doctor worked methodically even as he could see that his ministrations had no effect, the chimaras trying to be helpful, and the radiating globules that cascaded down from a trembling hand. It was a slow process, but as Trisha began to fade, Ed began to awaken. Maes smiled softly as the trembling increased and the final drop of energy fell, and the ghost of Trisha Elric returned to Truth.

The following week he had visited Elicia only to discover that she was dripping in sweat and breathing shallowly. Gracia was fast asleep, and all around the room lay empty bowls of soup and medications. He looked at Elicia and could hear the cells in her body fighting off the intruders. This wasn’t the first time he had visited to find her sick, but it was the first time he felt the panic of an overwhelming battle since Ishval. It was meningitis and Gracia hadn’t noticed. 

He was a philosopher’s stone, his body was rotting in the ground but his soul had been freed. It was the work of a moment, but he stayed until dawn forced him back into the confines of his casket. He felt greatly weakened afterwards but, for Elicia, he would do it a hundred times over.

After The Promised Day, Maes began to worry about Roy even more than usual. His friend had lept wholeheartedly into restoring Ishval, and it was making him enemies. A drop of his soul had enough power to teleport a traitorous document from one side of Central all the way to Hawkeye’s desk, and an assasination attempt was prevented. Another drop would later make a night watchman fall asleep just as Roy and his team infiltrated the records room. Truth had shown him how this dimension worked, and Maes fully intended to keep his promise to push Roy to the top.

He also kept an eye out for the boys. Neither of them really needed protection, but there were a couple of times that Ed managed to get into a midnight brawl with a man twice his size. Maes never needed to help him fight, but Ed would sometimes wake up to find that he had gotten out of the fight without a single bruise and would wonder if maybe he had imagined the whole thing.

Everything seemed to be going in the right direction, but Roy was unhappy. Roy’d never admit it, but he was lonely. He was a Brigadier General, owned a home, was well off, had a dream team of subordinates, and was set to succeed Fuhrer Grumman. And yet, despite all of that, Roy was unhappy. He had often told him to get a wife and settle down, and he had said that because it was true. Roy was a romantic, who was at his best when he had someone to fulfill his emotional needs. Hawkeye was a great friend, but Roy didn’t need a friend, he needed someone to come home to. The loneliness was tempting him towards the bottle, and Maes would kill him before he let him succumb to alcoholism. Luckily the solution had become very clear the day that Edward Elric stepped off the train, and sauntered back into Central a whole two inches taller and dressed in a sharp suit. Maes had joined him just after sunset, and Ed had wandered a few blocks before finding a bar. A bar that happened to have one Roy Mustang sitting in it. Roy had been chatting to his mother when Maes followed Ed in through the door, and watched in absolute glee as Roy glanced over, froze, blinked repeatedly, furrowed his brow as he did an obvious once over, and then hid his astonishment behind a mask of superiority.

“Looks like Creta finally deported you, I am surprised it took them this long.” Roy had said.

“They needed time to gather evidence to prove I was up to no good.” Ed had replied as he sat down beside Roy.

Maes had watched as the general queries turned to reminiscences and devolved into some not-quite-subtle flirting. It had been absolutely infuriating to watch the exchange that went absolutely nowhere. Ed had walked back to his hotel alone that night, while Maes glared at Roy wishing, for the millionth time, that he was alive so that he could properly yell at him.

It had been nearly a year since that day, and nothing had changed. He was ready to strangle them both.

The clock struck 7pm. Elicia looked up from her book momentarily, before continuing to read. He watched as Gracia stood up and proceeded to tidy up the throw blankets that had been knocked to the ground. It was a very simple domestic scene, and he was so glad he could still be part of it. He would be back, it was a Friday night, and Ed and Roy always went out for drinks together on Friday evenings. He needed to find out if all his efforts were going to pay off. With one last glance at his family, Maes focused on the familiar feeling of Roy’s presence, and took a hold of it.

The pull of Roy’s essence brought him to the pub. He looked over to the far back corner, and spotted Roy sitting down in his usual booth. With a sigh, he passed through the people playing billiards, and the server who was balancing a tray, and settled comfortably on the table with his back against the wall, and his legs crossed in front of him. Ed hadn’t arrived yet, and he really needed to see both their faces. This chaperoning gig had gone on long enough. There were only two possible outcomes for tonight, either Ed and Roy would suck face, or he would kill them both. He had heard Ed talk to himself far too much about how stupid he was for having a  _ ‘fucking crush on that fucking Colonel Bastard’ _ . Ed had been rather young when Maes had first heard that particular combination of words being hissed in a dark library room at some ungodly hour of the night, but it had explained a lot of his behavior towards the then Colonel. He had laughed it off back then, but the joke had gone on for far too long, and it was no longer funny, just irritating. Ed’s whole stint in Creta had only made it worse as Maes had popped in to check on him several times while he was at a bar, and  _ Every.Single.Time.  _ Ed had been chatting up a tall, dark haired man. He had laughed the first time, but by the 5th time, he was simply astounded that Ed managed to find so many men who appeared to resemble his childhood crush. 

Roy hadn’t behaved any better. Everything had been fine before a 20 year old Ed returned from Creta, but since then Roy had been a mess. Between political maneuverings, increasing his public standings, and flirting with Ed, the man hadn’t had time to sleep. He had watched Roy drink himself stupid 3 times because he kept convincing himself that Ed was off limits.  _ Oh please _ , Ed was so  _ on _ limits that he had basically transmuted himself into a welcome mat. 

He glared at Roy who was completely unaware of his presence. Suddenly Roy perked up, and Maes grinned maniacally, finally he would see if his plot had worked. 

“Urgh, you’re looking especially self satisfied tonight. Did enough people grovel at your feet at work?” Ed said with the especially sarcastic tone he saved for Roy.

Roy had already slouched artistically on his side of the booth in the way he had every single time he was trying to get someone to notice his particularly solid chest, and his unshakable confidence. Maes sighed.

“I’m still one person short on my quota,” Roy said with a smirk, “Would you do me the favour of fulfilling it?”

Ed squinted at him as he slid into the booth, across from Roy. “Ya calling me  _ short _ ?” He asked.

“No. I am simply asking you to let me reach peak self-satisfaction levels by getting on your knees.”

Maes wanted to cry, and from the slight flicker of Ed’s eye, so did he. 

“Piss off.” Ed said, “I can’t wait till someone assassinates you. You’ll finally shut up with your bullshit.”

Roy laughed, and Ed hid behind a scowl.

“I’m glad you could make it.” Roy said, “It’s been a long two weeks and Hawkeye has been off sick since last Friday, so no one has called me out on what you so politely call  _ ‘my bullshit’ _ since she had been gone. It has been--dull.”

“Yeah, well I’d have gotten here on time if my students weren’t such idiots.” Ed grumbled, as he fiddled with his hair.

Maes watched as Roy’s eyes focused on the threads of gold that Ed twirled around his finger, could the man be any more obvious?

“The struggles of teaching a 100 level class.” Roy said sympathetically, “Don’t worry, either the students will hate you so much you’ll get fired, or they love you so much you’ll forever be buried under essays that poorly explain the most basic alchemical theories.”

“Eh--could be worse.” Ed shrugged, “ some of em are alright.”

“I’ll take that to mean that your lab experiments are going well?” Roy asked.

“Yeah.” Ed nodded, “There’s one kid, Dorothy, who’s helping me. She’s good.”

“Is she the ginger one?” Roy asked.

“Yep, she was helping me refine the array I’m working on, she’s good at activating my arrays.”

Maes tuned out the ensuing discussion about the most recent alchemical theories, he had heard Ed and Roy discuss these things before and he really didn’t care. Roy, however, was listening intently and had lost his seductive slouch in favour of leaning on the table with his hands clasped, and his full attention on Ed. Unlike other nights, Ed wasn’t mirroring Roy’s posture, he was almost deliberately keeping some distance between them. Maes watched him closely, and noticed how even his hand gestures were much more restrained than usual, and Ed seemed to be doing everything in his power to not let any part of him  _ ‘accidentally’  _ brush any part of Roy, unlike _ literally every other time  _ they had interacted in the past year. That was interesting. It indicated that Hawkeye had said something.

Maes was still perfectly capable of creating and executing elaborate plans, but he simply didn’t want to. He was dead. He wanted to simply observe the world, and enjoy the incredible things that no one who was alive had time to notice. He was happy to be able to keep up with his family and friends, but in the end, he didn’t feel the need to act unless it was absolutely urgent, and this was urgent. He had had enough. Roy would never make Fuhrer if he kept wasting time pining for Edward, and Edward would never move on if he didn’t at least try to do something about his long-lived crush. They were both getting on his long rotted nerves, and he had waited until an opportune moment.

A week ago, Hawkeye had fallen into a river during a training exercise, and suffered some mild hypothermia as a result. Maes had located Roy in the hospital, late one night, and had read the medical chart on the side table. She was going to be okay, but she had a fever, and the doctors were keeping her under supervision as she lived alone and had no one to make her soup. The situation had been perfect. Roy had left when visitors were being ushered out, but Maes decided to forgo his usual routine, and instead waited until Hawkeye woke up in a feverish haze, and using a fraction of his energy, he did his best to solidify into a recognizably human form.

Hawkeye had sat up in bed, eyes wide, and forehead dripping sweat. He had opened his mouth to speak, but found that he couldn’t do that and maintain a physical form simultaneously, so he let the projection fade, and then walked over to the bed and whispered ‘ _ Ed likes Roy _ ’ into her ear. She had flinched, and rang the bell beside her bed. Instantly a nurse appeared, and began insisting that he was nothing but a hallucination brought on by her fever.

The nurse lay her back down, and stayed in the room until she had fallen back to sleep. Maes let her rest for a few hours, before settling down beside her head and whispering  _ ‘Ed likes Roy, Ed likes Roy a lot. Tell Ed to tell Roy.”  _ She had only shifted a bit in her sleep, but he repeated the same words a few more times until dawn. The following night he found her much worse off, so he left her alone, but proceeded to return the next night to continue to whisper in her ear while she slept. By the fourth night she was sleeping well, and he waited until she began to show signs of waking before commencing his whispering. It wasn’t easy to speak. It took far more energy than he would like to think about, but last night he had arrived early in the evening to see her sitting up in bed, and asking Roy about Ed in a croaking voice. She would obviously dismiss his appearance as a fever dream, but at least it was memorable enough that his message stuck. She knew Roy found Ed attractive, It was hard to miss, as everyone except Ed seemed to have noticed, but she didn’t know if Ed felt the same way. Ed had learned to control his emotions and to mask his reactions much better than he had been able to as a kid. He had placed the thought in her head, and she must have finally done something about it. Maybe he should feel bad about disturbing her sleep, but he was going to consider it payback for that time she borrowed and never returned his favourite pen.

A waitress had appeared, and both Ed and Roy were now silently drinking their beers and picking at the nachos that sat halfway through his foot. Ed seemed to be mulling something over, and Roy was giving him time to sort out his thoughts.

“Um, Riza called me.” Ed finally said. Maes tensed.

“Oh? What did she say?” Roy asked, “ I am surprised she called you, she could barely talk last night.”

“Yeah, she sounded like she had swallowed half a desert.” Ed said, “I think she must have been feverish cause she was saying some weird shit.”

Roy looked at Ed, “What sort of ‘weird shit’?”

Ed looked down at his drink, “She said--she told me to,” Ed hesitated and glanced away. “She told me to stop being such a wimp and to ask you out on a date.”

Maes turned to look at Roy who had stopped breathing. It took a second, but before Ed could run away he managed to find his tongue (which, considering that Roy hadn’t lost his tongue in over a decade, was pretty impressive) Maes clenched his fists and leaned forward like an excited puppy.

“Were those her exact words?” Roy asked.

Ed seemed to rediscover his ability to hide his embarrassment underneath anger, “Does it fucking matter?” He asked, “I paraphrased.”

Roy nodded, “Thought so, I don’t believe she has ever used the word  _ ‘wimp’  _ in her entire life.”

Maes threw his head back until it would have collided with the wall, except that his head went through it, and he got a solid view of a very big spider that had died a century ago and been encased inside of the building. It was nearly as gross as the sheer incompetence he was currently watching unfold before him.

“Well?” Ed asked, his tone sounding increasingly pissed.

“Well, what?” Roy asked, and Maes couldn’t tell if Roy was being serious or if he was being purposefully obtuse.

“For fucks sake.” Ed hissed, “ D’ya wanna date me or no?”

Roy stared at him, and Maes was a second away from draining the last of his energy stores to smack him across the head, but luckily Roy opened his mouth.

“Yes.”

Ed stared at him.

Roy stared back.

He was going to kill them both, drag their ghosts out of their graves, and smack them.

“Yes?” Ed asked, all his anger gone, and replaced with a quiet vulnerability.

“Yes.” Roy repeated, and extended his hand, so that it went through Maes’ knees, and took Ed’s hand. “I’ll date you.”

Ed looked transfixed at the hand that held his own, and he swallowed hard without looking back up, “Really?”

Maes almost felt the huff of the snort that Roy made as he held the hand tighter, and brought it to his lips. “ _ Really _ , really.”

The look on Ed’s face made all of his efforts worth it. Maes squealed with delight, drawing the attention of the ghost that had been sitting at the bar unnoticed. She looked over at him, and raised an eyebrow as he clapped his hands and jumped off the table. 

He wanted to hug them both, but the look in Ed’s eyes made him rethink his plan. Ed had gone from looking like he was going to cry, to fury, to shock, to looking like he was going to fuck Roy through the table. “Ah.” He said, taking a few steps back, “I’ll come back when you guys are done.” 

The ghost lady at that bar shot him another odd look, and he took a few more steps back before deciding that it was definitely time to go make sure that Elicia was properly tucked into bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, well I hope I didn't butcher this.


End file.
